


Annihilation

by MagusLibera



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe), Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Major Character Injury, Oliver Queen Has PTSD, Panic Attacks, Pre-Crisis, description of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21687208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagusLibera/pseuds/MagusLibera
Summary: Mia is hurt by the Anti-Monitor. Oliver does not handle it very well.
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Kudos: 55





	Annihilation

**Author's Note:**

> Three days until Crisis, so now I'm letting you share some of my pain!
> 
> I apologise for the graphic description of physics and the fact that the title is a genuine physical process that we are pretty sure actually happens. I really like particle physics, okay?
> 
> Rest assured that I do HEAs. Mostly.

_At the beginning of everything, there was energy. And the energy moved about as something that would later be called waves, but it also experienced something called_ duality _, which meant that it could behave as particles. These first particles – bosons – would interact with one another, meeting in the process of pair production, in which the first fermions were formed. For each two energy waves that met, two of these fermions would form, a particle and an antiparticle. Everything in balance, everything with its own counterpart._

_For a long time, things remained this way. Each time two bosons met to form a pair, a pair would meet and annihilate one another, back into energy. Amidst all of this energy, cosmic forces combined to form several collections of consciousness, spreading them across all that was known._

_And then the multiverse boomed, particles, hadrons, atoms, compounds, masses, structures, planets, galaxies, universes all forming, and almost all of it was matter. Most of the antimatter had become lost, vanished to an unknown reach of the multiverse, not to be seen again for billions of years, during which sentient lifeforms would rise and learn and understand. But not one could answer the question of the lost antimatter._

*************************

Unimaginable pain rips through Mia’s side, the feeling of her flesh being eaten away, the very atoms that make her up being inverted and disintegrated, makes her crumple to the ground. Everything around her turns blurry, the world fading from view and all sound reducing to the horrific sizzling crackle coming from her side. She can hardly feel the ground beneath her skin, the soft grass tickling her face and the fire of the blades beneath her injury, suffering the same fate as she is. Her mouth fills with a rancid flavour, like burning tar is coating her tongue, its acrid scent burning through her nose.

Through the fog, through the sensation of both floating in a senseless void and also being inundated with the most intense feelings of her life, a voice breaks through. Her name. It is saying her name. Over and over again. Panicked. Terrified. Loving. Pleading. A thousand messages conveyed in one word, repeated. It’s something special, the way that they say her name.

She fades.

Awareness filters through occasionally, snatches of that voice speaking. Not always her name, but a lot of the time. Baritone, soothing. It feels like home. There is another voice, too. One filled with fondness and heartbreak that breaks through to her sometimes. Not until long after the first voice though.

It is nice, to feel cared for even though she barely knows what caring is. What anything is. Only pain. Only destruction.

*************************

Oliver is letting arrow after arrow loose in his final, desperate attempt to hold the Anti-Monitor and their forces back for long enough to give the people of this Earth chance to escape before it is destroyed, when his worst fears are realised.

The Anti-Monitor appears, but that is not his worst moment. He fires a blast of antimatter directly at Oliver. Still not the worst, Oliver came here prepared to die in service of the Multiverse. He will gladly die to save his loved ones and everybody else in existence. No, the worst moment of Oliver’s life is when his daughter, his precious cargo all grown up, jumps in front of him, taking the blast herself and letting it rip along the side of her waist as she deflects it from him.

“Mia!” he screams, fear flooding him in a way that it never has before. Another blast makes its way towards him, forcing him to dodge instead of going to his baby girl. He knocks three arrows, all together, and fires them furiously in the Anti-Monitor’s direction, his attention split between his daughter, who is screaming on the ground, and their attacker. The distraction allows a third blast to get far too close, the heat emitting from it searing his face as it hurtles by and then, he is given a reprieve. Sara leads a team comprised of some of her Legends as well as Killer Frost, and some new girl who came with Kara towards the Anti-Monitor. Forming a half-circle around them and making an effective barrier for Oliver and Mia.

He takes advantage, skidding forwards on his knees to his daughter, “Mia, Mia.” He fusses, turning her small body to look for the injury. It only makes her scream more, twitching in his arms. When he finally exposes the wound, he has to supress a sob. The Anti-Monitor’s power has completely erased the entire left side of Mia’s stomach. There is nothing left there. The exposed flesh that is remaining seems to be charred and mottled, but the bleeding is minimal, suggesting that it has somehow cauterised. However, Oliver can still see the matter of Mia’s stomach receding, heat releasing in waves as whatever has hurt her continues to eat away at her, unseen.

Barely able to think, let alone make a conscious decision, Oliver just sits, crying into his daughter’s hair as he begs for her to be spared. When she releases another bloodcurdling scream, he is jolted out of his reverie. Still murmuring her name, he cradles her in his arms and lifts her like a child. He weaves his way through the battlefield, shielding Mia from all manner of harm as he makes a beeline for the Waverider. At some point, Sara shows up by his side, bowstaff twirling into a blur as she carves a pathway for the three of them.

They finally make it on board the ship, and Sara starts shouting orders that Oliver does not hear. All that he can hear is Mia’s whimpers of pain and his whispers of her name.

Subconsciously, he follows Sara and finds himself into the med bay. With all the gentleness that he possesses, he sets Mia down on one of the beds and steps back to allow Gideon to do her work. It does not escape his notice that the last time he was stood in this med bay, it had been Martin Stein in Mia’s position, and he had died.

His breaths surge up through his body, exhales growing longer and inhales shorter as his breathing speeds up. There is not enough oxygen in his lungs. The panic attack rings through his head, making the whole world spin and Mia’s beautiful face blur as everything becomes nonsensical. He can still hear himself saying her name, each time a plea for her to survive. He cannot deal with this. He cannot watch his child die. Especially not to save him.

“What’s… what is wrong with her?” he forces out between panting breaths.

“The antimatter that hit her is annihilating the very matter that makes her up. There are residues of antiparticles detected on the edge of the skin which is causing for a prolonged effect, and the surface of the damaged area appears to have been cauterised by the sheer amount of heat from the energy released by the annihilation.” Gideon informs him.

“What does that mean?” he growls.

“It means that the matter that makes up your daughter is no longer matter, but energy.”

“Can you fix it?” He wheezes, something squeezing his chest. He can tell that it is bad, but not how bad.

“I… I don’t know.” Gideon responds.

Oliver loses his battle and blackness invades his vision.

*************************

There is a beeping noise. The whirring of machines and computers hard at work. She would know, she was trained to recognise those sounds long before she was ever trained to fight, practically raised at a keyboard as she was. She can smell something like melted plastic, but colder, more sterile invading her nostrils. Her mouth tastes dry, tongue sticking to the roof where the two touch and the almost sandy quality to it tricking her body into tasting sand. She is not cold, but there is a clear chill in the air that is making her long for the warm blankets that her mother had stashed around their home when she was growing up. Probably still does, to be honest. Or will, at least.

Blinking her eyes open, she is met with the cold sight of metal and the familiar surroundings of a med bay, though not the med bay in the Bunker. She looks around, trying to place where she is and whether she is going to have to fight her way out of it (she would rather not, her body feels like it has been pulled apart and reassembled). Her scan of the room fixes on the warm, loving blue eyes of her father.

Enveloping her small hand in his large ones, he greets her. “Hi, Mia, you’re okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Mia is and will be okay now, I promise! Gideon did some good work and now she gets to save Oliver and fix the future! Goodbye, the end.
> 
> Any mistakes are mine as I don't have a beta.
> 
> I'm on Twitter [@MagusLibera](https://twitter.com/MagusLibera).


End file.
